


sure, she’ll kill him but won’t it be fun

by isoldewas



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: F/M, a fight scene turns into a make out, just like MY LIFE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:13:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26016313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoldewas/pseuds/isoldewas
Summary: “What would your mother say?”“What would my mother say?”A flash of teeth.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Lila Pitts
Comments: 5
Kudos: 46





	sure, she’ll kill him but won’t it be fun

**Author's Note:**

> i had the summary before the 2k so they have nothing in common

“Because if you hate what you desire, do you know what that is? Fucking tense!”  
-Nanette

i.

Lila stares right back at him, unblinking. Like a fish. Her face looks off.

She paints her eyes a bright silver, and Five watches her reflection turn cold and grey, her smile deadly.

They run into her in 1959. They’re trying to get dad to move before they meet him in the sixties.

Lila catches up to Five and Allison on the street, waving her hands like a maniac. Like an old friend.

She sleeps on the couch, and the family gathers in the corridor, shifting on their feet, wary and too loud.

Five can feel creases forming between his eyes. He touches his forehead, tries to smooth them out. 

“Care to explain?” Luther’s practically growling.

Alison’s the one who let her in, but Luther and Vanya stare at Five and not at her. And what would he even say? _She has a second briefcase. She’s a weapon, we should use her. She’s no danger to anyone anymore. She’s your girlfriend, wanna pitch in?_ But Diego doesn’t look like anything. He keeps staring at the wall, to the couch in the living room.

Alison speaks. “She’s one of us now, right?” And she must have rumored them because no one contradicts that. 

He wonders if Lila’s rumored them back on the street.

He doesn’t like her around his siblings.

She’s chewing on her toast while his brain’s calculating the probability of a fight. It doesn’t sit well with him that she could get up, her butter knife still in hand, and he won’t know what she’ll hit him with.

Five doesn’t like her one on one either, but at least she’s predictable.

Lila does this thing when she’s playing at him, it’s almost cute. She has her hands in her pockets, a tilt to her head, the whole ordeal. Like maybe she’s just guessing at where his power ends and he begins.

He tries to discern the same thing about her. Five tires himself out before breakfast is over, but he thinks he notices Klaus’ mannerisms, Allison’s open smile. The familiar tension in her shoulders, all Diego. But then maybe with that, she’s not even trying.

Whatever’s left is all Commission. Whatever’s left after that must be her.

Five watches her neck, and there she is, looking back. He turns away, lazy and slow, to the sun shining through her hair. To how the light bends itself around the strands.

Lila scoffs, and he watches her mouth.

ii. 

Lila stares back at him and puts down her brush. When she punches him square in the jaw, he wouldn’t even say he had it coming.

At this point, her violence has more to do with her than it does with him. His jaw starts to ache, and he holds up his hands. After the sixties, Five’s had to make a choice. They aren’t on opposite sides of this anymore, they don’t have time for petty grievances. He doesn’t have time for her revenge.

She can’t win this, that much is clear from the start. They’ve been here before: this ends with his boot on her throat and a compliment. 

But there’s also something to be said for how ruthless she is, how she claws and grabs. Lila blocks his every exit route, barely out of breath. Blessed with the dedication of a bloodhound, she doesn’t let up.

Five doesn’t know how to explain the lack of fear, her smiling even when he lands a blow. Like it doesn’t matter that he’s better. She’ll just get up, the corners of her mouth will rise. She must think she’s invincible.

She times her blows to whatever rhythm she’s set, but the thing is, it’s becoming a habit of his, to know what speed she’s operating at. So this is almost easy. Five watches the bend of her elbow instead of her fists. He’s noticed the angle of her hips, the tilt of her neck betraying the next hit. Her shoulder blades drawn together right up until the attack. Her footsteps heavy when imparted with an intention, lighter when she’s improvising.

Like watching a blow in reverse, Five can predict her next move. Her violence is efficient if a tad unhinged. Everyone’s allowed a deviation.

She grabs at his shoulder, and he uses it as leverage to corner her. Lila doesn’t miss a beat, kicking him in the stomach when he digs an elbow in her side. She laughs against his ear.

“You better watch it,” she says. 

She lacks her mother’s flair for it to land as she means it, but he can fill in the blanks.

This feels personal, in a way that he doesn’t care for. In a way that threatens the neutral ground they’ve established. In a way that’s not very different from his. 

He doesn’t know why he keeps leaning in, the distance between his throat and her mouth minimal. As though there was something to be found there. As though that’s where she’ll bite. 

There’s a danger about her, even if it’s manageable, even if for a time. He’s been watching her, and she kept staring back.

He takes a step back.

There’re crinkles in the corners of her eyes, and for a moment she reminds him of the old man he used to be. She looks at him with that smile and dead eyes, and he takes in Diego’s knife on her belt, her bruised knuckles, the empty space around her, like she knows exactly where she’s vulnerable. It takes time to unlearn.

Lila pushes the couch in a vicious burst of energy she must have borrowed from Vanya. He reappears on the other side of the room, stumbling on his heels, arms catching at the air.

She’s still leaning on the wall. There’s static in the air, like a remnant of their violence. She waves at him, long fingers uncurling from pink fists.

He crosses the room in nothing flat, catches her by the hair. One of his nails digs into her scalp and he can hear her hiss, he can feel her legs kicking.

“Nice.” Her voice sounds strained.

She grabs him at the elbow and gets out of his grip. When she turns around her eyes are black and shiny. He’s seen that look. Five knows it on a different face, and he knows what follows is never kind.

Her leg between his, Lila pushes her whole body into him, tumbling them both down.

iii.

Her knees, his knees. Her arm, crushing his windpipe, but careful, lovingly. Her angle is off and she does nothing to correct it.

He sort of likes her hand splayed across his throat. That’s what Five likes best about her, that she can inflict real damage. That she’ll enjoy it. There’s something almost reassuring about her smile: sure, she’ll kill him but won’t it be fun. He grins back.

He can feel the shift of muscle underneath his palms, like she’s pulling herself together to strike. But her hands land on his hips, and she’s found a different angle of attack, exactly her style: predictable yet deadly. 

Lila rolls her hips into him, once. She watches for a tell.

And he’s thirteen.

It’s a low blow. He kind of respects her for it. 

She’s making everything impossibly bright. There’s a halo of light around her head, but then she’s still crushing his throat, so maybe it’s just that. Nothing else’s in his frame of focus, just Lila. She’s so close it’s impossible to view her as an ensemble: instead, Five sees her teeth appear from under her lip, a strand of hair falling over her left eye. She blows air on it, her eyes crossed, and it’s funny, it tickles his forehead, it's hilarious.

He tries for something: his finger grazing just barely at her ribs, higher. It makes her muscles jump, it makes him flinch. It’s nothing, it’s this: being thirteen is turning his brain chemistry all kinds of fucked up. 

He wants to examine his hand, make sure she didn’t slice it open. Her skin is scorching hot but again— not really. He keeps coming up with these images, strands of words that impart meaning onto what’s essentially a sloppy make out. Except she isn’t sloppy. When he looks up, her eyes smile at him with no embarrassment.

The sheer amount of confidence radiating off her is intoxicating. No one can hurt her, he certainly can’t. His hands get to her and instead of afflicting damage, they touch. There’s a familiarity there, so he applies it to her, his fingers to her arms, to her shoulders, and she lets him. 

And there’s something to be said about bodies because someone is too young for someone and it shows, but he’s not sure it’s her.

It can’t be him. If anything, he’s the creepy old man here. Except for where it looks like she’s the creepy young woman. He tries to imagine what she would look like if she weren’t playing him. If this wouldn’t be an angle to get to what she wants.

She kisses him like she’s got all the time in the world, and it’s tempting, it’s easy to think she’s right. She’s right and he should be more careful but then here they already are. Lila’s not pulling away and he won’t pull her closer, so she locks her arms, bent at the elbows, and firm around his neck.

“What would your mother say?”

“What would my mother say?”

A flash of teeth. Her eyes are pitch black. She’s going to love him to death.

And Five doesn’t think she’ll stop. She’d get past his ribs, to the watery mess of lungs, to the heart.

His hand closes around Diego’s knife on her hip.

His other hand finds its way to her chin. He tilts it up and goes for the jugular. Her jaw is narrow and angular, a perfect target. Yet there’s something in Five that won’t bite. His teeth scrape her throat. Open-mouthed and short-breathed, he does a parody of kissing. 

Lila makes a sound, like a whine, like a word buried in the back of her throat. He doesn’t think it suits her. He doesn’t think she meant for it to come out. For a split second, she looks uneasy. The tension in her spine isn’t calculated. 

She doesn’t look desperate, but then he doesn’t _look_ confused. Maybe they don’t look like anything, lying on the floor, waging war.

Everything about her is hard edges, except for how pliant she is under his hands. But then the beads of her bracelet dig into his sides, and he remembers. She’s just like him. There’s a thing in her she can’t unlearn, and it’s cutting a shape in her, it’s cutting corners around her personhood until everything soft in her dies. 

He presses Diego’s knife against her throat.

iv.

She gets off him, her eyes black and empty. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

Lila shifts on her feet, under his eyes, like she’s trying to shake him off. Maybe she’s mimicking him, he thinks when he looks at his feet. He’s standing there too, waiting, looking to her for the next move.

He wants to ask about it. He spits out.


End file.
